Loved the Roses on Saturday! Agree with the beer situation - we didnt even bother queing after about 4 o clock!

Off to see the Levellers on Wednesday night at Anderton Boat Lift in Nantwich?! Odd venue. Then T in the Park early doors friday morning.

Tired isnt the word.

There was, surpringly, logic in my choice of bike and tyre - although it was probably flawed. At the time I was looking to loose some serious weight, but didnt have the time to exercise enough so commuting on a bike with mountain tyres used more energy than road tyres. It also allowed me to investigate moutain biking! I dont think I'll be pursuing that. (I managed to knock 7 stone off in 6 months though!)

Thanks for the recommendation, Im going to have a nosy round a few places, but it would help if I had a least a vague idea of what I was looking for. Will visit that site.

Cheers

Having bottled the C2C last year (due to 'domestic issues' - code name for breaking up!) Im toying with the idea again, possibly early next sping. Got the tax dodge cycle scheme at work and am looking for something a little better than my Ridgeback MX2. Budget isnt massive, even with the tax saving! Any recommendations of either models, or what not to go for and what not. Will be used for my daily commute of 6.5 miles each way as well as the odd long ride other times. Most cycling is road or cycle paths.

We stayed at the Hilton for our anniversary.

If Podium is the restaurant on the ground floor (on the right as you walk in) then the food there was absolutely excellent.

Cloud 23 is worth checking out, but its very pricey - I bought a cocktail and a bottled beer and think it was £12 or thereabouts. The view is great on a clear evening though. Worth one drink only though - the bar next to the restaurant downstairs had a much better selection and was a little cheaper (but not much).

I did offer alternatives! Also worth a visit is The Continental in Preston off Fishergate Brow. Hard to find but check the website. Good food, good beers and live music at weekends.

Can anyone recommend anything in Bowness/Windermere? Off up there in a short while for the wedding anniversary.

Benni bic mac is a perfect example of your washed-up, past it, journeyman footballer who's lost his hunger for the game (though not for McDonalds, clearly).

He is an appalling example of a journeyman.

People have short memories.

He cost £300K? He and The Admiral were key in our battle against relegation when he arrived and for that Rovers fans should be grateful, ironically enough The Axe has ALWAYS been a premier league footballer!!

Apart from when he played in Belgium

Exactly, but we invested a lot more money in Mokoena to find that out.

Naturally, he is better than Gary Harkins.

You guys don't get the point - he isn't championing Harkins, he's saying Mokoena is crap.

Neither player is good enough for Blackburn Rovers.

With all due respect 6, you are championing a player on the ground of what you have read, of him playing in a vastly weaker league north of the border.

I make one of the infamous rover6 predictions here and now, "WIthin the next two years, Aaron Mokoena will disappear into obscurity and Harkins will be making a success of his career in either SPL or maybe CHamp." I am hundred percent confident about Mokoena's career demise, and the Harkins prediction is going on his current amazing form.

In two years Mokoena will be the wrong side of thirty and his current side will have been relegated (there's a prediction).

Harkins will be 25/26.

Mokoena is currently a far better player than Harkins is.

Has anyone been to Chaophrya in Manchester?

Isnt the reason that no one has been able to get hold of Mr Agbonlahor today that Joey Barton has kidnapped him?

Just to explain, I'm a techie and I have a big passion for using technology to simplify processes. That is the real reason I would support ID cards, although I'm not blowing the trumpet for it stopping terrorism, just speculating how it might.

What processes will they make easier?

It would cost millions of course, to implement these, but I think it would be an investment whereby it can make things stealthily cheaper by centralising data and speeding up processes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we now pay something like £80 for our passports? An ID card would be a similar cost perhaps (no engraved burgandy coverings/laminated pages etc). I don't believe looking at it as a "direct" cost is something to be put off by...

Why should I pay for both.

Like I said, I don't know how these cards would work exactly, but if it was to help in stopping them access to certain services or things that were essential to their activities then I wouldn't be against these ID cards.

If it was to do that then it might have a purpose. But it wont, as service providers are unlikely to have access to the data.....

... go figure.

I see your point, but they could potentially stop things like identity theft and make it easier for certain services, such as aircraft training lesson, to be prevented to those on terrorist watch list, etc. I can only assume that they were intended to be used in this manner.

They could also use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The flip side of it is that we don't have these ID cards and it's hard to locate real terrorists and criminals. I don't see what this 'civil liberty' jargon is all about to be honest... unless you are doing something that makes you concerned to have one of these ID cards! Also, have you been asked in particular about your plots for violence? I doubt the police force have the luxury of wasting time taking the p*ss out of decent citizens.

Back to my original point: exactly what freedom is being taken away? I'm not being argumentative here for the sake of it, but I genuinely don't see a problem with it personally.

What benefit is there to ID cards, particularly in the fight to stop terrorism?

I couldn't agree with you more. Football is a sport and Friedel is giving free opportunities for young 'uns to succeed, whereas all Cronaldo and Betnley care about are their ego. Whereas they would prefer to be just models, Friedel is a true role model.

Any idea what is free with the PSA?

I know there is some stuff, but the website seems to only hold data on the paid stuff.

Livebait is OK, better food at Simply Heathcotes around the corner. Sams chop house is still the best place to eat in Manchester with it's charm and good honest English food. Piccolino's is good for italian as is Croma opposite it.

Armenian Tavern is a good shout, not necessarily romantic though. Juniper in Altrincham is good, but very expensive (Michelin star). The yang sing is till just about the best chinese although anywhere in China town is pretty good. Stock is very good, and probably a bit more along the line sof what you are looking for. It's the old stock exchange building between king street and market street. Very good wine list.

Ive never had anything but problems with Stock.

Food was good, but service and attitude of ALL the staff was appalling.

I'd like to know how playing Taylor today would have been worse than playing Reid....

Can I borrow some of your hindsight American!

Again, playing Olsson for 15 minutes didn't kill us and didn't cost us any positioning or money.

Playing Pedersen constantly has.

Agree with you on Martin, who bought when he was 17 (?). He impressed, and gets offered occasional first team chances.

And as for Pedersen, agree wholeheartedly! But thats a different issue entirely!

Whatever you think about rover6 he has put an argument forward without resorting to name-calling , ad-hominen attacks or personal insults. If you think he is wrong then why not try to debate as to why rather than just slag him off? The last two posts are just concerned with rover6.. You two just seem to keep goading rover6 yet you don´t address his points. If you think he is wrong then why not challenge what he writes rather than trying to undermine his status as a contributor to this messageboard?

Without understanding what the argument that is being put forward is, or its foundation. Its difficult to reply soundly.

However, I'll say what Ive said dozens of times about the academy....

In my Opinion

..The issue is not the lack of the youngsters we have being blooded into the first team.

The issue is that we are not getting in good enough youngsters, or they are not being developed well enough to break into the first team.

The insistence of some parties that we use players that are not good enough as cover having never seen them, and with evidence pointing to them struggling at lower levels never mind in our first team squad is just a bit bizarre.

Finally, I admit to hardly having seen Taylor play

unless Hughes was going to sign a genuinely superior and valuable left back - but that Bruno Berner is not.

Having never seen him play, how do you know this?

Wasnt Reid played on the left wing.

Didnt he get touted as a replacement for Duff?